


The Language of Birds

by gloss



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke, Once and Future King Series - T. H. White
Genre: Crossover, M/M, Magic-Users, old fic reposted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-20
Updated: 2006-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:42:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1639481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All magicians lie, and the Raven King, like Merlyn, is fond of tall tales and impossible deeds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Language of Birds

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Zee and Petra for handholding and to G. for kickass beta action.
> 
> Written for mayhap

 

 

**This is a crossover with Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.**

 

 

  
_Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,_  
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.  
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind  
Cannot bear very much reality.  
Time past and time future  
What might have been and what has been  
Point to one end, which is always present. (Eliot, "Burnt Norton")  


The King's Letters contain far more than spells. The shape that clouds make on the eye of a trout, curves on bosomy curves; the scratched-out whisper of rosethorns on frost-hardened ground; the unquiet murmur of the history of rocks, rough and needful with centuries of witness -- all this and more may be found in the King's Letters.

The Letters describe an autobiography of possibility, roads bypassed in a winter storm, rain that did not fall and birds that might have sung had their eggs not tumbled to the ground in a sudden wind.

The Raven King was here, and there, and yet elsewhere. He is yet to be born, and he has long since passed out of this world and its neighbours.

The Letters live within Vinculus's skin. They change as he moves.

This is a story born from the fold in his thigh, the broken cries of his mouth, the stuttered joy tightening his frame.

*

Wart and Kay had not spoken for quite some time. They paced down the path in the interior of the Forest Sauvage side by side, occasionally jostling each other. As twilight fell, gathering amid the trees, the path darkened, becoming little more than a silvery thread through the gloom.

"Oaf," Kay muttered when Wart stumbled over a root and knocked Kay's hip.

"Sor--" Wart began, but Kay was not looking at him. Kay kept his eyes fixed on the path; his jaw was set, a hard curve of bone beneath his downy beard.

They were playing Rovers, but there was no spirit of fun to be found anywhere in the vicinity. Wart tried to give Kay easy targets, but Kay glowered at him, and Wart relented.

"There --" Wart pointed at the twisting branch of a hawthorn tree twenty yards away. A small blue dove perched on the very end, round as an apple.

Kay sighted the target through his bow, drew taut the string, and let his arrow fly. It sailed two feet over the dove. The bird did not move.

Tossing his bow into the underbrush, Kay cursed loudly and stalked away.

Wart followed him to the next clearing and silently gave Kay back his bow. He waited expectantly for Kay to give him his target, but Kay continued, very pointedly, not to look at Wart.

"Kay --" Wart bit his lip. He should not whinge; he was too old for that.

"You're a bloody _git_ ," Kay spat. His eyes finally found Wart's and they were black in the shadows, darker and _fuller_ than anything Wart had ever seen. "And to think that all this time --"

"There?" Wart pointed to the yew tree at the other end of the clearing. It was ancient, even for this old forest, gnarled like Oriental calligraphy. At its roots, the path forked.

Kay kicked a clod of dirt and heaved a sigh. "Fine. There."

Wart nodded and lined up his aim. He could not miss; he did not want to give Kay anything else with which to torment him.

The longer he stared at his target, the quieter the forest seemed to grow. This was contrary to everything Wart knew, and a distinct sense of unease, nearly akin to foreboding, settled through his bow arm.

" _Unfair_ , that's what it is," Kay spluttered and knocked into Wart's side.

Startled, Wart released the arrow and watched it sail far from its target. Kay knocked him down, rolling Wart off the worn dirt into the cool grass. Sticks and acorns rattled and broke beneath them as Wart tried to wriggle free.

"I said I was sorry!" he yelled before Kay clapped his hand over Wart's mouth. Wart twisted away, but Kay brought his knee down in Wart's belly and hissed at him to be quiet.

Despite himself, Wart complied. Kay wore an alert expression, watchful and wary; the sight of him, silhouetted against the tangle of the forest canopy, stilled Wart to the bone.

He _was_ sorry. He could never lie to Kay, and he had hated, all these years, never being able to tell him about the natural history expeditions he took using Merlyn's magic. That the truth had finally come out -- that Wart had let slip the truth, desperately attempting once more to impress Kay -- that Kay would never --

Wart closed his eyes. He was uncertain whether he regretted telling Kay the truth _now_ or having not told him _sooner_. Time whirled, wobbly and unpredictable, as he tried to make sense of his own feelings.

Perhaps this was how Merlyn felt with his backsight and insight, living backwards, caught like a twig in the changing currents.

"You hit something," Kay said as he slipped his hand from Wart's mouth. Wart worked his jaw for a moment until sensation returned. "You _bastard_ , you managed to hit something."

Kay sat back, heedless of the branches and brambles, and covered his face with his hands.

After a moment, Wart pulled himself to his feet and padded toward the yew. He could not find his arrow, nor could he understand what had spooked Kay so badly.

At the path's fork, already treading the yew's roots, Wart paused and looked back.

The light in the forest seemed to contract to a single silvered plane: the crown of Kay's skull. It wavered and blinked back at Wart like an old mirror, turned to the wall of a long disused room.

He heard the murmur of birds then, first in the yew's branches, then within his own head, then _everywhere_. He moved back to Kay's side, filled with the familiar tenderness, but it was joined now with a novel sense of -- of _power_.

"You?" Kay asked when Wart touched his shoulder. Perhaps he was overexcited, or exhausted, but Kay had to blink many times, even knuckle his eyes, before he could speak again.

The Wart was a sharp-faced, bright-haired boy, built like a hound's pup, head too big and limbs too long. The young man before him looked like no one Kay had ever met.

He looked like Wart, turned wrongside-out. Dark hair for fair, a knowing smirk for Wart's familiar lopsided grin, and when he spoke, he sounded like a field of heather exhaling into the dawn.

This dark Wart dropped to his knees and put both his hands on Kay's shoulders. He cocked his head for a moment, bright tongue flicking against his lower lip, before moving to unlace Kay's jerkin.

"Stop it!" Kay had meant to shout, but the sound came out soft, interrogatory.

"In your dreams, you're a knight," this other Wart said and Kay could only nod dumbly. Anyone could know that. "You fly a green and gold flag, and your squire warms your pallet every night."

"Yes," Kay said, but not aloud. The dark man's hands had slipped inside his jersey, palming his chest, testing his heartbeat. They moved lower and gripped Kay's waist, pulling him forward.

"I am not here," the man who was not the Wart said into Kay's mouth. Kay moaned against the hot pressure and the taste of winds filtered through birdwings.

This must be one of the Old Ones, Kay decided, those about whom Robin Wood had warned them. He _knew_ that, but his reaction to the fairy's presence was nothing like the revulsion he had felt in Morgan le Fay's brugh of lard. Rather, he felt as if he were aloft, tethered only to the currents of the air and the faces of the stones far below by a single warm cord, by the pressure of the fairy-man's fingers.

Kay groaned, knowing he should fight, but he found that his legs were wrapped around the dark fairy's thighs, that he was kissing ever deeper, more insistently.

" _Wart_ ," he said, once, because it was the only thing he knew. He saw, behind his lids, his brother's cheering face, felt the damp heat of a night's sleep shared under the bearskin with him, and moved his hands down the fairy's back.

"He is here," the fairy said, directly into Kay's blood, the sound beating timpani in time with his heart.

"Give him back," Kay said, then jerked like a lost rein when the fairy pushed his hands under his breeches. "No, Wart, please --"

Kay said nothing more. The fairy moulded his mouth to Kay's throat and tugged at his hair, at his prick, moved him in animal shapes with the grace of a lark and the speed of rain, and Kay shuddered and shook until he was clenching, gritting his teeth, spilling hot and fast over the fairy's jerkin.

"Be mine," the fairy said, deeper inside Kay, twining their fingers together and licking the underside of Kay's skin. Promises scrolled out like banners, faded, then brightened again, and Kay thrashed against the renewal of his pleasure.

"Wart --"

"Yes."

Kay pulled free and ran, clutching his breeches to his waist, through the underbrush. He hated Wart, hated him and resented him, despised all the magic that Merlyn gave the bastard like sweets from the nurse's apron, like milk from a mare, always more, whatever Wart wanted, and nothing for stupid, useless Kay.

He ran until he found a path, and then he slowed. His breath came painfully through his teeth, slicing down his chest, and he was very cold.

The path wound to a yew, and Kay stopped. In the roots of the tree, Wart knelt, scrabbling helplessly for his lost arrow.

"I can't find it," Wart said when Kay joined him. "You win, Kay."

"Of course I do." Kay's voice felt strange, almost jagged, in his mouth, but he slung his arm around the Wart's shoulders and turned for home. "Of course I do."

*

After Vinculus has spilled out his seed and carelessly wiped himself with Childermass's handkerchief, the King's Letters change again. They seem to widen as the man rolls onto his back and sets to snoring. They widen and deepen, and they tell another story.

The King may have lived in the North, or on the borderlands to the Welsh; the son of a Norman nobleman, he was lost after birth, and when he returned, it may have been with a fairy horde. It may have been in a deserted church-square before a sword set in stone.

The King came then, and also then, and he may return, or he may have already vanished again. His Letters suggest possibilities, spin out strange coincidence and odder synchronicity.

All magicians lie, and the King, like Merlyn, was fond of tall tales and impossible deeds.

The King sleeps, thrown like a blanket over a charlatan's body, while what may have been, great love and brotherly irritation, jostles arm-in-arm through the Forest Sauvage.

 


End file.
